Wally, water, VE Day and vomit
Posted 11 February 09 by Scott AndrewsWally Stott has died.
He composed and arranged music for the Goons and Hancock in the fifties, and had a wonderful, Goonish name which evokes the smell of cassette tapes and happy hours spent listening to old radio shows on various clunky old tape players in my spotty youth.
He wasn’t called Wally Stott when he died, though. She was called Angela Morley. Just isn’t as memorable, is it?
This obituary is a tiny window into what sounds like the most fascinating life, and contains quotes from Max Geldray, another name that evokes tape hiss.
In her later years Angela not only reinvented herself, but she reinvented her career, moved to LA, was nominated for two oscars, and then became was an uncredited collaborator with John Williams.
This means that the man responsible for the wonderful tuba theme to Hancock was also the woman responsible, at least in part, for the Star Wars March.
Now that’s two totally iconic pieces of music that I never thought would be mentioned in the same sentence.
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The land around Tonbridge was all under water and covered in a thick layer of ice as I made my way to work this morning. Lots of happy water fowl, lots of unhappy commuters.
Last night the road home had a sign up saying it was blocked, but everyone was ignoring the sign, until a cop car came to sit there and turn back motorists with a fearsome glower. When he left, they resumed going round the sign.
My taxi had to do a huge detour around tiny back lanes, more flooded than the main road we were forbidden to drive, and we ended up rejoining the main road a few metres before the flood anyway. Sigh.
The taxi driver was a garrulous chap, telling me that he had taken a homeless guy under his wing and was sorting him out a Big Issue gig and a flat.
It was unclear why exactly he was doing this, or why he was telling me about it, but he seemed a pleasant enough unexpected philanthropist.
I even got to see piccies of the old house he’s just bought in France, which looked lovely, if a bit of a fixer-upper. Miracle I didn’t kill him there and then out of jealousy and spite; but then, who’d look after the itinerants of Tonbridge?
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Obviously the ITV execs read my blog as this morning we find that they have relented and commissioned a new series of Foyle’s War. This is brilliant news, but raises a tricky problem.
They raced through the last bit of the war to get to VE day in double quick time due to its premature axeing by the old ITV regime, who seemed to be embarrassed by having a big ratings hit that was both a little bit Reithian and a hit with older viewers but not so much the youngsters.
(A problem that also besets the BBC’s highest rated show, New Tricks, a surprise ratings juggernaut even though it’s about wrinklies and nobody under 30 watches it. ITV at least have the advertising demographic argument to back cancelling something like Foyle, but the BBC have no such justification. Popbitch recently claimed (with what level of accuracy it’s hard to know) that the BBC execs are desperate to cancel New Tricks because it’s not sexy and cool – ie it’s not Hustle or Bonekickers – but they can’t justify axeing it coz it’s a massive success. This conjures an image of a BBC scheduler drowning his sorrows in GnT and moaning “but old people smell of wee!” To which the only possible response is “but Bonekickers smelt of s**t!”)
But now the Foyle team have got to do three new stories set after the war which are, if the format is to remain valid, somehow about the war.
That’s not too big a problem; I’m sure Horowitz can conjur up three good murder mysteries based around post-war crises and angst.
But, um, shouldn’t it now be called Foyle’s Peace?
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Thomas is sick as a dog with cold, conjunctivitus and has developed an exciting new skill – projectile vomiting. This last is especially popular at four in the morning. In fact, last night I swear I heard a voice cry ‘Hark! Thomas has murdered sleep!’
Meanwhile, Kitty made a sudden and unexpected detour to the 1950s this weekend, when she decided to start calling me Daddio.
It makes me feel hep, cats. Like Max Geldray, or Wally Stott.
